This invention relates to wireless local area network systems.
A recent development in the field of local area networks has been the introduction of wireless communications in such networks. Another development has been the introduction of portable, battery-operated devices for use in such networks. Unfortunately, the batteries used for such devices have a restricted life span, thereby limiting the time for which the portable devices can be effectively operated.
In order to control the operation of local area networks there have been introduced network operating systems (NOS). A feature of many such NOS systems is that a record or log of all active stations in the network is maintained at a central control device such as server. If a station does not show activity for a certain period, a procedure is followed to determine if the station is still active. If the station is no longer active, then it is deleted from the table, or "logged-out", whereby resources such as files which were opened for use by that station can be closed off.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a method for operating a local area network system which enables the battery power of mobile stations to be conserved, while having the capability of preventing the stations from being undesirably logged out of a network operating system.